only evidence he adduces is its present use in the East, and the primitive form of Eastern instruments." "I would ask how comes it that the bow was unknown to the Greeks and the Romans? Did not Alexander the Great conquer India and Persia? And were not those countries better known to the ancients than to the modern until within the last three hundred years? The Spaniards derived their instruments from the Moors, but the bow was not among them."About fifty years later than the date of North's "Memoirs of Music" appeared the famous work of Martinus Gerbertus, entitled, "De Cantu et Musica Sacra." Among the valuable manuscripts referred to by the author is one which supplies the earliest known representation of a bow instrument of the Fiddle kind, and which may be accepted as a description of German Fiddle. The date of this particular manuscript has been ascribed by M. Fetis to the ninth century. It may possibly have belonged to an earlier period.13
13 As the manuscript was destroyed by the fire which burnt nearly the whole of the buildings, Abbey, Church, and Library of St. Blasius in the Black Forest in 1768, the language of Gerbertus, who examined the original manuscript, is worthy of some attention. After referring to certain plates, copied from a manuscript of the year 600, he says that "the other twenty-three representations on the following eighth plate" (in which is included the early German Fiddle) "are from a manuscript a little more recent." Whether
the period of three centuries named by M. Fetis can be considered recent is at least questionable. The information taken from this manuscript is of paramount importance, with reference to the Asiatic and Northern views of the origin of the Violin. The view taken by some authorities, that the Europeans received their earliest instructions in infantile Fiddling from the Moors, when they
conquered Spain in the eighth century, is already overclouded by the representation of a Fiddle and bow on this German Manuscript, even assuming it to be of the ninth century; but if its date be given prior to the appearance of the Moors in Europe, the Eastern
view of the subject is naturally further darkened.
The instrument was described in the manuscript of St. Blasius as a Lyre. Gerbertus rightly observes that it has only one string, and
15
is more like a Cheli.14 He quotes writers of different epochs relative to the meaning of the word Lyre as used by them, the tendency of his remarks apparently being to establish a connection between the German Fiddle named a Lyre in the manuscript and the Rebec. The representation we have of the instrument certainly conveys the idea of its having been a progenitor of the Rebec of
the French, the Ribeca of the Italians, and the Fithele and the Geige of the Germans. The mention of an instrument of the kind
in a German manuscript, discovered in an ancient German monastery, together with the record being dated by Gerbertus as not far removed from the sixth century, lends much weight to the opinion of Roger North with regard to the part played by the Teutonic race in the early history of bowed instruments.
14 The ancient name of corded instruments of the Lute, Mandoline, and Guitar kinds. Tradition has it that the Nile, having overflowed Egypt, left on shore a dead Cheli (tortoise), the flesh of which being dried in the sun, nothing was left within the shell but nerves and cartilages, and these being braced and contracted were rendered sonorous. Mercury, in walking, struck his foot against the shell of the tortoise, and was delighted with the sound produced, which gave him the idea of a Lyre that he later constructed in the form of a tortoise, and strung with the dried sinews of dead animals. This account of the origin of Lutes, Fiddles, and catgut is classic and picturesque. Tradition and myth have played parts of much consequence in the work of civilisation: they have, however, at length fallen upon a critical and remarkably sceptical age, and rapidly fade and die under the inquisitorial torture of modern inquiry--a result at least to be expected from the contact of their own dreamy and delicate nature with unromantic matter. It is perhaps safer to refer the origin of the name Cheli or tortoise, as applied to corded instruments, to the fact of their having sound chambers, constructed with tortoiseshell, as was the case with the Greek Lyre, or to the circumstance of the bodies of the instruments being shaped like the tortoise. The Germans used the word Chelys to designate their Viols; and Christopher Simpson, in his
famous treatise on the "Viol da Gamba," names it Chelys. The application of the word Chelys to bowed instruments is suggestive of their remote connection with the ancient Lyre.
ANTONIO STRADIVARI VIOLA.
1672. Plate I.
It is now necessary to refer to the well-known representation of a Saxon Fiddle contained in the Cottonian manuscripts in the British Museum. Strutt, in his "Sports and Pastimes," supplies us with a copy of the illustration, which is that of a juggler throwing balls and knives to the accompaniment of an instrument of the Fiddle kind. Strutt ascribes the manuscript to the tenth century. The form of this Fiddle is in advance of that supplied in the St. Blasius manuscript, there being four strings, but there is no bridge indicated, and, had there been, it would not have evidenced a Saxon knowledge of tuning the strings to given intervals, and playing upon each string. The little light which has been thrown on the condition of instrumental music at the time renders it doubtful whether any bowed instrument was used, other than for the purpose of rendering a rude extemporaneous accompaniment to the voice or the dance.
The chief authorities upon ancient minstrelsy agree that the Saxon's love of music was cultivated for centuries with ardour by his Saxon ancestors; it would therefore be reasonable to believe that his knowledge of rude Fiddles was derived from the land of his forefathers, and not from any instrument he discovered in Britain.15 The similarity of the instrument of the St. Blasius manuscript and of that in the hands of the Saxon Gleeman in the Cottonian manuscript is evidence of Teutonic origin. It is, moreover, strengthened by the fact of the use of the word Fithele by the Anglo-Saxons for nearly two centuries after the Norman Conquest, which name was adopted with but little variation by the whole of the Teutonic race.16 In Germany the word was used as late as the twelfth century. About this period the word Geige appears to have been applied in Germany to designate a Fiddle. It is described as an improved Rebec, and strung with three strings.17 The use of the word Geige in Germany instead of Fithele in the twelfth century,
is worthy of attention as bearing upon Teutonic origin. The earliest information we have of the use of the Geige in France is in connection with the Jongleurs. The Geige was popular in France until the fifteenth century, when, as M. Lacroix says, it disappeared, leaving its name "as the designation of a joyous dance, which for a considerable period was enlivened by the sound of the instrument." The word Geige, I am inclined to think, is important as furnishing evidence of historical value in relation to the ancestry of the Violin. Lacroix believes that Germany created the Geige; other authorities are of opinion that it originated among the people of Provence. The former view is supported by the strongest evidence. Some inquirers derive the word Geige from the French and Italian words for leg of mutton.18 Wigand, however, supposes it to be derived from the old northern word Geiga, meaning trembling, or from Gigel, to quiver. If we consider the nature and character of the instrument, this view of the derivation of the word appears both ingenious and correct. Roger North shrewdly conjectured that the "rude and gross" Gothic Fiddle "used to stir up the vulgar to dancing, or perhaps to solemnise their idolatrous sacrifices." In the Dark Ages dancing may have been regarded as bi-pedal trem-
bling. I have remarked in another place,19 "In the early ages of mankind dancing or jigging must have been done to the sound of the voice, next to that of the pipe, and, when the bow was discovered, to that of a stringed instrument which was named the Geige from its primary association with dancing." The evidence we have of the use to which the leading instrument was put in the days of its adolescence is indicative of its having grown up among dancers, jugglers, and buffoons. In Germany its players gave fame and name to a distinct class of itinerant minstrels named the Gigeours, who were often associated with the Jongleurs in their perambulations.
In France,
